Danbury High grad named co-coach at Catholic U.

DANBURY - For as long as he can remember, J.P. Sousa has loved playing soccer. It was the gift that his father, John, brought him all the way from Portugal.

"Everything that I know about soccer, I learned from my father," said Sousa, a former Danbury High and Western Connecticut standout. "He was my first coach when I was five years old."

These days, Sousa is the one with a whistle and a gift for teaching the world's most popular game. After spending three years as an assistant coach at
Catholic University
in Washington, D.C., Sousa has been named co-head coach of the women's soccer program.

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Sousa will share the sidelines with
Jon Gross
, another ex-Catholic assistant who was promoted when
Scott Racek
stepped down after last season.

"We're really excited about the program. We've had back-to-back winning seasons and we're coming off the most successful season in school history," Sousa said, referring to Catholic's 14-5-1 record in 2003 and its first trip to the ECAC Mid-Atlantic Tournament.

"It's pretty amazing, actually. Throughout the '90s, it was a losing program. It was a varsity sport, but players were basically recruited from the students already on campus," Sousa said. "What we've tried to do the past few years is go out and actively recruit players. As a result, our level of play has risen and it's put our program on the map."

And how.

In 2001 - Sousa's first year on Racek's staff - the Cardinals went 6-10 after dropping their last three games by a combined score of 8-0. But Sousa was hardly discouraged.

Instead, he hit the recruiting trail even harder. He scoured the Mid-Atlantic states in search of the best prospects at the best youth soccer tournaments.

Racek was hardly disappointed with the new players Sousa steered to Catholic.

The Cardinals went 11-5 in 2002 - a five-game improvement in just one season - and heads all over the Capital Athletic Conference started turning.

Suddenly, Catholic was flexing its muscle in the league standings, all the way to an unprecedented third-place finish last season.

"Recruiting is one of the things I love the most about this job. When I first got to Catholic in 2001, I got involved in recruiting right away because I knew some of the places to go," said Sousa, who coached youth soccer in northern Virginia before he was hired.

"Because coaching here is a part-time job, I was able to do a lot of different things. That's why I'm looking forward to working with Jon so much. We pretty much share the same philosophy about the game and we've both invested so much time into the program already."

Sousa, 28, has spent much of the last decade in Virginia. After graduating from Danbury High, he spent two years at Division I
George Mason
in Fairfax, Va., before transferring to Division III Western Connecticut in 1996 to play for Wayne Mones.

Sousa was a senior at WestConn in 1998 when he cut his teeth as a coach with Eastern FC of Greenwich. Much like Catholic University, it didn't take long for Sousa to shine.

With his help, Eastern FC's U-13 team won the Connecticut State Cup and appeared in the USYSA Region I championships.

After graduating from WestConn with a degree in political science, Sousa headed back to Virginia, where he coached a U-15 girls team and a U-13 boys team with the Vienna (Va.) Youth Soccer program.

But no matter how much success he reaped, Sousa couldn't get one thought out of his mind.

"I started to wonder if I could get involved at the next level. So, I looked around and I saw that Catholic had an opening for an assistant," Sousa said. "I met with Scott for about an hour or two, and by the end of it, he said, 'You know, I like you.' It all happened pretty fast.

"All of a sudden, I was 25 years old and coaching on the college level. It's funny, though. Soccer is soccer. You're still teaching the same thing, technically and tactically. The biggest difference is the skill level."

When he's not working at Catholic, Sousa is studying for a master's degree in education at George Mason and coaching boys soccer at nearby
Oakton High School
. Unlike Connecticut, scholastic soccer is a spring sport in Virginia.

"I love it down here. There's a good energy and a great soccer atmosphere," Sousa said. "It's definitely a lot of work, though. If I broke down my salary at Catholic by the hour, I'd probably be making pennies. But right now, anyway, it's not about the money.

"I love what I'm doing. I'm having a great time. Every day, I get some kind of mail - letters or emails - asking about the program. That was unheard of before. Everything is really starting to pay off. The biggest thing we have to do is strengthen our schedule."

Along those lines, Catholic will visit Western Connecticut on Sept. 4 in the 2004 season-opener. In so many ways, it's the perfect homecoming for Sousa.

Only now, the journey that began with a father in Portugal has taken his son to Washington, D.C.